Android 7.0 is just around the corner. What should we expect from Google’s next major release, code-named Nougat, when it drops in the next few weeks?

For one, don’t expect earth-shattering updates. Android, like iOS, is a mature mobile operating system and platform with broad support, including massive development community. It’s definitely not 2009. Back then —
Droid Does!
— mobile and the smartphonetantalized us. Indeed, abrand new world. We were happily decommissioning our BlackBerrys and jumping into the new, exciting world of Android.

But now, the word of the day is:
refinement
.

Google and Apple have both found their respective mobile metaphors. So it’s really about making what works, work just that much better. Baby steps, year on year.

Google likes widgets (making the homescreen infinitely useful, informative), openness (so even most system programs and features are “apps”), and a do-it-all notification bar. It works, even if its more complex and demands a bit more effort from new users.

Apple, on the other hand, likes an integrated experience (phone, tablet, and laptop), simplicity of design (meaning less customization… though restrictions, like the ability to installcustom third partykeyboards, have been easing in recent years), and ease of use. You just pick up an iPhone and it works. Not the most hacker friendly thing in the world, but then again this is the company that famously locked its original Mac (and iMac too!) computer from our tweaking hands.

Respective slogans for these two differing philosophies might read something like this…

Google: It’s your house. Go ahead and add wallpaper if you want.

Apple: It’s our house. There’s V8in the fridge. If you don’t like V8… well, there’s more V8in the fridge.

Hands-On with Android 7.0 “Nougat”

I’ll leave it to others to assess the name. “Nougat”? I’ll just say that perhapswe’ve had our fill of dessert-themed codenames.

I do like, however, how Google has implemented its beta channel. Want to test an upcoming release of Android? No more flashing, and multi-step procedures. Now, you simply sign-up with Google for the beta program, select which of your registered devices you want to test with the beta Android release, and soon thereafter (almost instantly in my experience) a system update notification appears. From there you install it like any other release. Great stuff. Even better: when the final shipping version of Nougat arrives, it will appear just like any other update. And it just keeps getting better: using this process
does not
wipe your data. You can test away, and not have to reset and reload your phone and apps each time.

I installed Nougat on my Nexus 6 (still a great phone, battery life be damned).

Any unanticipated threat to survival triggers an immediate sequence of events in the brain that culminate in a coordinated neural, endocrine and behavioural response. There is increasing evidence that stress itself modifies neural circuits. In other words, neural stress circuits learn from stress. This self-teaching is surprising as one might expect these essential circuits to be hard-wired. Our recent findings, however, indicate that repeated homotypic stress in rats causes functional changes in neural circuitry in the hypothalamus. In particular, we focus on signalling via endocannabinoids and describe plasticity in this system that impacts fast retrograde signalling at synapses on to the stress command neurons in the brain. Interestingly, this plasticity appears to be limited to early adolescence, hinting at unique modes of control of neural circuits by stress during different developmental stages.

In all organisms, maintaining a stable internal environment and responding to external threats is vital for survival. This requires the ability to sense, transduce and respond effectively to real and perceived stress. In mammals, multiple brain nuclei are activated in response to both physiological and psychological challenges. When faced with a challenge to internal homeostasis or an unanticipated, direct threat to survival, this ‘stress circuitry’ rapidly sets in motion a cascade of neural, neuroendocrine and behavioural responses. Mounting an appropriate physiological response to such challenges requires that the brain interprets, learns from and then remembers the appropriate stimuli. This series of tasks is accomplished by groups of interconnected neural networks that incorporate information from sensory systems, process this information in higher brain centres then engage downstream effectors to coordinate generalized behavioural and physiological adaptation to change. In the short-term, these adaptations are beneficial as they allow the organism to respond to the threat. They also promote learning, which results in more refined responses to subsequent challenges. When launched inappropriately, however – for example, in the absence of stress – they can have deleterious effects on mental and physical health (
McEwen and Gianaros, 2011
;
Stetler and Miller, 2011
).

Magento also has an active community of experts, developers, and agencies allowing merchants to easily connect with others if they need support. And if you need to further extend the functionality of Magento, you can always use add-ons to enhance your site.

Demandware
– This fully-hosted solution allows you to run a powerful ecommerce store in the cloud. Merchants using Demandware won’t have to worry much about platform maintenance and development since it’s fully hosted by the company (though this may limit your freedom a bit).

One of Demandware’s strengths is that it’s built with omnichannel retailers in mind, and it has features that enable merchants to easily sell across physical and digital storefronts.

Oracle Commerce
– This enterprise ecommerce solution can be implemented on-premises, or it can be hosted by Oracle or a third party. It has features that can benefit both B2B and B2C merchants, and it comes with powerful functionalities that enable you to sell more complex merchandise and data-rich offerings.

Oracle Commerce also allows users to easily customize sites and campaigns while giving them the ability to efficiently launch sites for multiple brands and markets.

Shopify
– A popular choice among many SMBs, Shopify has features that let you sell online, on social media, and in-person. It lets merchants build and customize their ecommerce site through easy-to-use interfaces and templates. And it has features such as inventory management, reporting, buy buttons and more. It also has social selling functionalities for those who are active on sites like Facebook and Pinterest.

Shopify is fully hosted,which means merchants won’t have to worry about maintaining the platform or using their servers.

BigCommerce
– Used by big and small brands alike, BigCommerce offers features such as a site builder, shipping options, reporting, and more. It also enables merchants to sell on other sites and platforms, including eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Google Shopping, and Square. Plus it has a Buy Button for enabling sales on blogs, emails, and more.

Additionally, BigCommerce has a built-in B2B offering for wholesalers and merchants selling to other businesses.

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are terms coined by noted German sociologist
Ferdinand Tönnies
over a century ago, to describe two concepts in social groups. Gemeinshaft and Gesellschaft are loosely translated into “community” and “society” respectively.

Examples of gesellschaft social groups include corporations, diverse countries, social clubs, universities.

In practice, Tönnies would not classify a social group as purely either gemeinshaft or gesellschaft. More than likely both types are at work in a social group at varying strengths.

Tönnies theory provides a useful lens to see social groups and social networks through. Because of the mixed nature of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft in social groups, you can see transitions where groups that used to be gemeinshaft-oriented move toward a more gesellschaft nature.

Let’s take a look at Twitter and in particular early Twitter and modern Twitter. In the early incarnation of Twitter, the use case and the social groups that formed around the service were much more gemeinshaft oriented. Long time users of Twitter will comment on how Twitter used to be a conversation with friends and now the signal to noise ratio is much lower. When Twitter was small, the community that existed had much stronger bonds. Twitter as a service was used as a public conversation with friends.

Twitter is now a utility to get news and stay on top of what is happening for many people. The social group we make on Twitter is predicated on a contractual relationship where I as the individual am much more important than the circle of followers/followings that I formed.

Thus we see the rise (and fall) of smaller social networks (app.net, ello, diaspora), where the early adopters of a gemeinshaft network have a chance to pick up and move their social group to a place where it is better facilitated. On Facebook, we see “friends” start as a small set of friends into a directory of acquaintances. In order to restore gemeinshaft, Facebook allows you to now deliniate “friends” vs. “family”. In Google+, this takes a similar form of being able to define “circles”.

As social networks grow in size and scale, there is an almost inevitable transference from gemeinshaft into gesellschaft and an equally inevitable conflict. Periodically, there is backlash and those seeking gemeinshaft splinter off to form a new social network or protest — seeking to return to the days when the network was smaller.

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